One of my favorite adventure/RPGs of the past few years is finally DRM-free and ready (once again) for its close-up. While the Xbox 360 version of Risen suffered from a terrible downgrade in visual quality, the gameplay was intriguing and challenging enough to keep me playing. Of course, the PC version is the way to go if you can run it smoothly with all the settings up, so here you go for a measly four bucks. While the game is shorter than developer Piranha Bytes’ Gothic games, there are a ton of things to do and places to go on that deadly island your character gets shipwrecked on. The solid sense of accomplishment you get from surviving those early encounters is bolstered even further as you take down enemies that previously caused you grief (and there are many right from the beginning of the game) and your character grows into a force to be reckoned with.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now and let you get to checking this one out. It’s a really nice surprise for fans of European made open world RPGs as well as quite the sleeper that should have gotten a lot more attention. As for Risen 2? Well, we’ll talk about that one later, as I still need to finish it one of these days and can’t say whether or not I like it just yet…

